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I Could Tell Her From Personal Experience That When People We Love Make Choices We Don't Always Understand Them. But We Can Go On Loving Them, Just The Same. It Isn't A Matter Of Comprehension. It's Forgiveness. But All This Took Me A Lifetime To Discover, And Where Has It Gotten Me?... Some Lessons Can't Be Taught, They Simply Have To Be Learned.

-Jodi Picoult

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I Could Tell Her

Jodi Picoult

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I Could Tell Her From Personal Experience That When People We Love Make Choices We Don't Always Understand Them. But We Can Go On Loving Them, Just The Same. It Isn't A Matter Of Comprehension. It's Forgiveness. But All This Took Me A Lifetime To Discover, And Where Has It Gotten Me?... Some Lessons Can't Be Taught, They Simply Have To Be Learned.

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I Think My Writing Has Become "cleaner."

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It Was A Strange Thing, To Still Be In Love With Your Wife And To Not Know If You Liked Her. What Would Happen When This Was All Over? Could You Forgive Someone If She Hurt You And The People You Love, If She Truly Believed She Was Only Trying To Help? I Had Filed For Divorce, But That Wasn't What I Really Wanted. What I Really Wanted Was For All Of Us To Go Back Two Years, And Start Over. Had I Ever Really Told Her That?

Joseph Obomsawin, The Elder I Lived With There, Says That Those Who Turn To Animals Do So Because Humans Have Let Them Down.

And In General, The Residents Of The Town Wondered Why They All Felt Hollow Just Beneath The Throat, The Result Of Missing Something They Had Never Been Able To Name In The First Place.

The Human Capacity For Burden Is Like Bamboo- Far More Flexible Than You'd Ever Believe At First Glance.

Nathaniel Closes His Eyes And Jumps, His Arms Glued To His Sides Like That Fly's. He Doesn't Try To Break His Fall, Just Hits Hard, Because It Hurts Less Than Everything Else.

Life Sometimes Gets So Bogged Down In The Details, You Forget You Are Living It. There Is Always Another Appointment To Be Met, Another Bill To Pay, Another Symptom Presenting, Another Uneventful Day To Be Notched Onto The Wooden Wall. We Have Synchronized Our Watches, Studied Our Calendars, Existed In Minutes, And Completely Forgotten To Step Back And See What We've Accomplished.

It Seems To Me That No Matter What Religion You Subscribe To, Acts Of Kindness Are The Stepping-stones To Making The World A Better Place--because We Become Better People In It.

You May Be Real, But You're Still Stuck In A Book.

I Consider Myself Spiritual And I'm Married To A Man Who Is Both An Atheist And A Humanist, And My Kids Have Been Raised With The Traditions Of Different Religions, But They Do Not Go To Church Or Temple. My Feeling Is That Everyone Should Be Able To Believe What They Want Or Need To Believe.

Do You Know How Sometimes - When You Are Riding Your Bike And You Start Skidding Across Sand, Or When You Miss A Step And Start Tumbling Down The Stairs - You Have Those Long, Long Seconds To Know That You Are Going To Be Hurt, And Badly?

Riding Your Bike

[i] Don't Think I Was Trying To Kill Myself. I Just Wanted To Hurt, And Understand Exactly Whay I Was Hurting. This Made Sense: You Cut, You Felt Pain, Period.

Rest Easy, Real Mothers. The Very Fact That You Worry About Being A Good Mom Means That You Already Are One.

This Was Something She Would Keep Hidden Within Herself, Maybe In Place Of The Knot Of Pain And Anger She Had Been Carrying Under Her Breastbone...a Security Blanket, An Ace Up Her Sleeve. She Might Never Use It, But She Would Always Feel Its Presence Like A Swelling Secret Stone, And That Way When She Let Go Of The Rage, She Would Not Feel Nearly As Empty.

History Could Hover, Like A Faint Perfume Or A Memory Stamped On The Back Of One's Eyelids.

A Place Like This Wears Down Everything, And Tolerance Is No Exception. In Here, Coexistence Passes For Forgiveness. You Do Not Learn To Like Something You Abhor; You Come To Live With It...you Live And Let Live, And Eventually That Becomes Enough.

Live And Let Live

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Optical Illusions

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A Lie, As You Probably Know, Has A Taste All Its Own. Blocky And Bitter And Never Quite Right.

I Woke Up One Morning Thinking About Wolves And Realized That Wolf Packs Function As Families. Everyone Has A Role, And If You Act Within The Parameters Of Your Role, The Whole Pack Succeeds, And When That Falls Apart, So Does The Pack.

Bad Is Not An Absolute, But A Relative Term. Ask The Robber Who Used The Cash He Stole To Feed His Infant; The Rapist Who Was Sexually Abused As A Child; The Kidnapper Who Truly Believed He Was Saving A Life. And Just Because You Break The Law Doesn't Mean You Have Intentionally Crossed The Line Into Evil. Sometimes The Line Creeps Up On You, And Before You Know It, You're Standing On The Other Side.

And He Suddenly Knew That If She Killed Herself, He Would Die. Maybe Not Immediately, Maybe Not With The Same Blinding Rush Of Pain, But It Would Happen. You Couldn't Live For Very Long Without A Heart.

We Could All Be Lucky. We Could All Be What We Want To Be, Instead Of Who Someone Else Told Us To Be.

You Can Fool Yourself, You Know. You'd Think It's Impossible, But It Turns Out It's The Easiest Thing Of All.

My High School Guidance Counselor, Mrs. Inverholl, Once Had Me Take An Aptitude Test To Figure Out My Future. The Number One Job Recommendation For My Set Of Skills Was An Air Traffic Accident Investigator, Of Which There Are Fewer Than Fifty In The World. The Number Two Job Was A Museum Curator For Chinese-american Studies. The Number Three Job Was A Circus Clown.

I Think That's Probably The Most Devastating Thing - When Someone Who Is Larger Than Life Winds Up A Shadow Of Themselves In A Hospital Bed.

What Being Home-schooled Has Taught Me, More Than Anything, Is What A Waste Of A Life High School Is.

Extraordinary Things Are Always Hiding In Places People Never Think To Look.

Some Lessons Can't Be Taught, They Simply Have To Be Learned.

When Your Existence Is Hell, Death Must Be Heaven.

The Weapons An Author Has At Her Disposal Are Flawed. There Are Words That Feel Shapeless And Overused. Love, For Example. I Could Write The Word Love A Thousand Times And It Would Mean A Thousand Different Things To Different Readers.

You Have Everything. A Family, A Great Job, A Lot Of People Who Look Up To You. You've Got A Place To Go Home To. So Go.

No Matter What Joe Hoffman And Wade Preston Say, It's Not Gender That Makes A Family; It's Love. You Don't Need A Mother And A Father; You Don't Necessarily Even Need Two Parents. You Just Need Someone Who's Got Your Back.

They're Fake Bullets, So Why Do I Feel Like Im Bleeding Out?

The World Just Feels Different For Those Of Us Who Come Alive After Dark. It's More Fragile And Unreal, A Replica Of The One Everyone Else Inhabits.

You Live And Let Live, Eventually That Becomes Enough.

Live And Let Live

It Was Possible That A Miracle Was Not Something That Happened To You, But Rather Something That Didn’t.

I Loved Alex So Much That It Was Easier To Let Him Hurt Me Than To Watch Him Hurt Himself.

By Now You've Already Formed Your Own Impression. You Believe That An Act Committed A Lifetime Ago Defines A Man, Or You Believe That A Person's Past Has Nothing To Do With His Future. You Think I Am Either A Hero, Or A Monster. Maybe Knowning More About Circumstances Will Make You Think Differently About Me, But It Won't Change What Happened Twenty-eight Years Ago.

No Matter How Much You Consumed, You Would Not Have Your Fill.

Just Because You Had Every Right To Feel Sorry For Yourself Didn't Mean You Ever Took The Opportunity To Do So.

If God Wanted Us To Act On Instinct, We Wouldn't Have The Power Of Reason.

Being A Teenager Isn't All That Different From Being Part Of Someone Else's Story. There's Always Someone Who Thinks They Know Better Than You Do

Risk Always Looks Different When You're Beating The System Than When You've Been Beaten.

From That Point Of View, I Realized That My Hole Was Not Miles Deep After All. My Father, In Fact, Could Stand On The Bottom And It Only Reached Up To His Chest. Darkness, You Know, Is Relative.

Was There A Language Of Loss? Did Everyone Who Suffered Speak A Different Dialect?

The Apple . . . Came Before Adam And Eve In The Story Of Creation. It Had To Have Been There At Least Three Years Because That's How Long It Takes For A New Tree To Bear Fruit.

Asking Me To Describe My Son Is Like Asking Me To Hold The Ocean In A Paper Cup

People In The Real World Would Kill For A Happily Ever After, And You're Willing To Just Throw It Away ?" I Look Away From Her. "it's Hardly A Happily Ever After When You Wind Up Right At The Beginning.

Life Was What Happened When All The What-ifs Didn't.

Here's What I Hadn't Realized: The Mother You Haven't Seen For Almost Thirty-six Years Isn't Your Mother, She's A Stranger. Sharing Dna Doesn't Make You Fast Friends. This Wasn't A Joyous Reunion. It Was Just Awkward.

Write A Living Will. And Become An Organ Donor!

You Keep Distracting Me,” I Tell Her. “all I’m Doing Is Sitting Here Talking To You!” “exactly,” I Say, And I Smile At Her.j

Or In Other Words, It's The Substance You've Got When You Start That Determines The Outcome.

When You Showed Someone How You Felt, It Was Fesh And Honest. Whe You Told Someone How You Felt, There Might Be Nothing Behind The Words But Habit Or Expectation.

I Don't Believe In Writer's Block. Think About It - When You Were Blocked In College And Had To Write A Paper, Didn't It Always Manage To Fix Itself The Night Before The Paper Was Due? Writer's Block Is Having Too Much Time On Your Hands.

I Grew Up In A Household Where We Didn't Really Talk About Our Feelings, And Where The Only Reason You Went To A Doctor Was Because You'd Accidentally Cut Off A Limb With A Chain Saw.

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